A Midwinter Match

  A Midwinter Match

  Jane Lovering

  To the lovely and wonderful Ruby Taylor, who let me borrow her name for my heroine when I just didn't know what to call her! May you grow up to be as happy and successful as Book-Ruby (I am sure you will!)

  This book is also dedicated to the memory of Martyn Ledger.

  Contents

  From the YouIn2Work website:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  More from Jane Lovering

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  From the YouIn2Work website:

  Our aim is to get you back into the workforce!

  With our help you will be able to prepare an up-to-date CV, highlighting your capabilities and expertise, apply for jobs suited to your qualifications, and widen your scope of suitable workplace experiences.

  Our Confidence Coach, Ruby Oldbridge, will work with you to make you the best version of yourself that you can be, and will help you boost your self-esteem to enable you to showcase your skills in a marketable way!

  Ruby is a qualified therapist, who also offers talking therapies for those who feel that their mental health is holding them back from gaining the workforce experience that they would wish to have.

  ‘Ruby made me feel that I could do anything!’ – Mike Williams, out of the workforce for three years, now Deputy Manager at Lo-Cost Stores, Haxby.

  ‘Every time I spoke to Ruby I came out of that room feeling a million dollars. She’s just so upbeat that she makes you believe in yourself again.’ – Adela Kamal, returning to work after seven years raising a family. Now a Customer Services Manager at Mega-Rail Trains.

  1

  I was up a ladder painting the front room when Gareth came in.

  ‘Hey, Rubes!’ He put down his bag. ‘Sorry, but I’ve been called in. I’ve got to fly to Belgium this afternoon, sort out a problem with some rotary flanges.’

  I had no idea what a rotary flange was, but I didn’t think I liked the sound of it. ‘But you’ve only been back a week!’ I climbed down the ladder, hands slippery with ‘September Morning’. ‘What do you think of the colour? Bit blue?’

  ‘It’s great.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘And, yeah, sorry, but it’s work.’

  ‘How long will you be away this time?’ Gareth fitted big expensive machines all over the world. It meant that he flitted in and out of my life like a crane fly, all long legs and more noise than you could imagine one creature making. Now we’d bought a house I’d fondly imagined he’d want to settle down a bit, but there was no sign of that happening yet.

  ‘No idea, Ruby, love. Now, do you want to give me a proper send-off, or what?’

  ‘But I’m covered in paint!’

  ‘No worries.’ He smirked at me. ‘We could make a blue movie. Geddit? Blue? Movie?’

  Well then, it wasn’t his intense wit that had attracted me to Gareth Williams. And to be honest, when he made jokes like that, I found it a bit hard to remember just what it had been.

  ‘Meet you upstairs in five.’ He sprang out of the room and I heard the clump as his feet went up the, as yet uncarpeted, stairs. The door to our bedroom slammed open and there was the sound of the bedsprings twanging as he threw himself down on the mattress.

  I carefully covered the paint tins, smiling to myself. Gareth was just so – so enthusiastic. A bit unreconstructed, sure, but I was working on his rough edges with the sandpaper of my own upbringing. I had no idea how a man born thirty years ago could have all the attributes of someone who’d grown up in the sixties, but he did.

  Good job he was so bloody gorgeous.

  I noticed his bag, where he’d dumped it in the doorway. He would have made his usual attempt at packing, but I bet he’d forgotten all the clean shirts that were hanging behind the kitchen door and the underwear he’d pulled out of the tumble dryer and left in a pile on the floor in the utility room. I didn’t want desperate phone calls at two in the morning again because he couldn’t find his Ted Baker shirt or his favourite Tweety Pie boxers, so I unzipped the bag to check he’d put them in.

  He’d packed more pairs of jeans than one man with only two legs could ever need. I sifted through, looking for the shirts which, of course, weren’t there, and was just about to shout up to him that he needed to repack, when my fingers felt something hard.

  A box.

  A jeweller’s box.

  I smiled to myself as I pulled it out. Gareth had never given me a ‘goodbye’ present before. To be honest, he’d never been big on presents, but his whole family weren’t really into gifts of any kind. Christmas in his household had been more about the TV and the food. It was another thing I’d been working on, and with some success by the look of this little leather box.

  The thumping of my heart was mirrored by the thumping upstairs, as Gareth strode to the top of the stairs. ‘Hurry up, Rubes! It’s getting cold!’

  Was it a ring? Was he going to propose? How did I feel about that? My mind was going at a million miles a second. Marry? Gareth? For a fraction of a second I had the image: church, white dress, my mum looking cynical, my sister looking relieved – then on to a living room crowded with children, Gareth sitting in the middle in front of the TV while the children played…

  Was that what I really wanted?

  I pulled the little catch to open the box, wondering how much this had cost. Even the box looked expensive, and Gareth usually baulked at buying takeaways. ‘Your cooking is much better than any takeaway, Ruby love.’ It would have carried more weight if he’d actually helped wash up afterwards.

  Inside the box, nestled on a pillow of sumptuous red velvet, was a pair of gold earrings and in the lid of the box was a note in Gareth’s slightly childish handwriting.

  Remember that pair you wore that night in Brighton? I’ll never forget taking them out with my teeth and getting one stuck in that lacy bra of yours! Promised I’d buy you a new pair, didn’t I? Can’t wait to do that again…

  My hands were sweating and my hasty lunch of tuna on toast was threatening the back of my throat. I sat down hard on the bottom rung of the ladder, the box between my fingers and the smell of paint scalding the inside of my nose. Upstairs, the bedsprings twanged again, a tiny orchestra tuning up for sex.

  There were three things wrong with this little gift.

  One – I wasn’t sure any of my bras could have been described as ‘lacy’. I favoured the more sturdily constructed variety. Nobody needed their nipples rasped whilst dashing to answer the phone, as I repeatedly told Gareth, who repeatedly treated me to Ann Summers’ finest.

  Two – I didn’t have pierced ears.

  And three – I’d never even been to bloody Brighton.

  Eight Months Later

  I parked my car in the YouIn2Work car park, which seemed busier than usual. The offices were neatly located behind York Minster, which sat in the winter sunlight, half yellow where the sun struck the stone but with the shaded half dark and sharp with shadows. I wondered if they were holding an event and had, once again, failed to point out that our car park was out of bounds. Religion seemed no protection against dreadful parking, and every space in here was rammed.

  As I locked my car, I looked around. My usual space was occupied by a Discovery, most of the other cars were high-end brands too; maybe God had seen
fit to bestow nice car ownership on His followers. I looked at my ten-year-old Skoda and wondered if it was too late to have a sudden Damascene moment, then looked at where my mirror had scraped along the wall in the tiny space I’d had to squeeze it into. Atheism was still paying off.

  Halfway across the car park, I met Priya, who’d obviously been waiting for me and had bustled her way out to intercept me before I got through the door.

  ‘Ruby! There’s a meeting!’

  I shifted my car keys from hand to hand, almost as though I expected her to attack me. It was most unlike Priya to come out from behind her desk, which held her computer, her phone and most of the major food groups.

  ‘Okay. In the Minster?’ This would be the point where I would be called upon to make tactful phone calls and to use my skills at people management to cheerfully chivvy the enthusiastic (and blessed) worshippers to park elsewhere. I looked back over my shoulder to where my car was quietly rusting. If it had had any sense of occasion, it would have chosen this moment for the bumper to detach and crumble onto the tarmac.

  ‘No! It’s us!’ She was shuffling from foot to foot. ‘They’re merging us!’ She set out towards the building. ‘They’ve decided to cut costs by putting us in with the Back To Employment lot.’

  I shuddered as though my grave had been stomped on. The Back To Employment group was our rival, our bogeyman. It was what we threatened underachieving employees with. They did the same sort of thing as us – getting the long-term unemployed back into work – but they did it with less finesse and encouragement and more punitive measures. They also looked like the sort of people who went on team-building exercises and called one another ‘guys’.

  I stopped walking. The full car park suddenly made sense and I felt the clamps around my ribcage start to tighten. ‘But I thought… I mean, our success speaks for itself!’

  ‘Yeah, well, apparently theirs also talks and it says “merger”.’ Priya looked at me. ‘Are you okay? You’ve got that face on.’

  I took a deep breath and forced my lungs to expand. ‘Fine. No, really, I’m fine.’

  Priya lowered her voice. ‘Have you taken your tablets today?’

  ‘You make me sound like I’m liable to lay about me with an axe if I’m not sedated.’ I took another deep breath. ‘Yes, thank you, Pri. I’ve taken my tablets today.’ Ah, those tablets. Another legacy of Gareth’s abrupt departure, my anti-anxiety medication.

  She didn’t respond, just opened the door and we walked through into the corridor, which always smelled of illicit cigarettes and frantic repainting. I automatically turned left, towards our offices, but she shook her head at me. ‘Meeting room,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Oh God. It must be serious.’

  ‘And that’s why I asked about the tablets.’

  The meeting rooms were usually only used for get-togethers: Christmas parties, the occasional visiting dignitary or government minister. It was the kind of room that had photographs of local scenes on the wall, as though we may have forgotten where we worked, because why anyone who actually lives in York needs to see The Shambles By Night in moody black-and-white shots when they could just go out and see The Shambles by night in real life and colour escaped me.

  The meeting room was a swirl of people, all milling about on the static-filled carpet like restless wild ponies before the roping started. The YouIn2Work crowd were grouped around the far end, huddled together and whispering. The strangers were also sticking together, close to the door. Presumably so they could make a run for it if we turned out to eat human flesh.

  They looked cocky. Self-contained and confident. The men all wore well-cut suits and shiny shoes and the women, of whom there were fewer, looked sleek and professional. I immediately felt crumpled. Beside me, Priya adjusted her collar and yanked at her skirt, clearly as uncomfortable as I was.

  I shuffled my way through the newcomers, who moved reluctantly, and over to my workmates who were trying to hide their tattily-trainered feet under tables and were making furtive attempts to tidy their hair.

  Priya stuck close behind until we reached the safety of our colleagues and turned. ‘It’s like a school disco,’ she whispered to me. ‘If anyone plays MisterMister, I’m off.’

  A man stepped apart from the Back to Employment crew and advanced towards us, his immaculately clean trainers raising little sparks from the cheap green nylon flooring, like a special effect. He was tall and long-limbed and, in contrast to his workmates, was wearing jeans and a jacket over a T-shirt and his hair was tousled. He could only have said ‘friendly and approachable’ more clearly by having it tattooed on his forehead. I distrusted him immediately. ‘You’re Ruby Oldbridge?’ He held out a hand. ‘Zac Drewe.’

  Cautiously, as though he may explode on contact, I shook his hand, took a deep breath and assumed my usual, relaxed, friendly work-persona. ‘Hello!’ I said brightly, without the least idea what was going on. At least he didn’t attempt the double-handed handshake, because I would have had to kill him.

  ‘This is all a bit difficult, isn’t it?’ he asked, almost as brightly as me, but clearly with a lot more insight into the circumstances.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, absolutely truthfully. Priya, who’d been stuck to me like a guide dog, had peeled off and was hiding behind the IT boys. Damn, I’d been relying on her to find a sudden excuse to call me away. ‘The worst thing is that someone has parked their Discovery in my parking space!’

  ‘Ah.’

  I took the brightness down a notch. ‘Oh. It’s yours, isn’t it.’ I didn’t even need to make it a question.

  ‘Well, I guess they are going to have to work something out, re the parking, for the time being!’ Zac Drewe – a name that sounded perfect for making things out of sticky-backed plastic and PVA glue on children’s TV – gave me a slightly cooler look. ‘If we’re all going to be working together? Until they sort out who’s going to have to go?’

  The thought that a merger may mean losing my job hadn’t even occurred to me. I was the only person in the building who did what I did, who could do what I did. I counselled, cajoled and encouraged our clients. I’d personally boosted our success rate from the low twenty per cents up to a near sixty-five per cent job return. And the clients loved me. Most of them still sent me Christmas cards and sometimes presents.

  Zac Drewe hovered until the management team came in and we all sprang to attention as they started talking. I had to admit that the Back To Employment crew had got the whole ‘listening hard, agreeing whilst thinking deeply about what’s being said’ really down to a fine art. There was a lot of tilting of heads, frowning, slight nodding going on. In contrast, my workmates were all staring at the sickly carpet, shuffling and nudging one another. We looked a bit shambolic in contrast. But then, we’d never done raft building.

  The upshot of the address was that we were merging to ‘save costs’. Governmental directive. As both teams were partly paid from governmental funding, it made a kind of grudging sense to reduce the overlap. But I was still confident that my job would be safe, despite my sweaty hands and the sick feeling that was creeping up my neck. Our unique selling point was that we counselled; our USP was me and I was good at what I did. So I had slumped into a kind of hubris-laden ‘can we all stop talking and just go back to work’ fugue, when I noticed that people were walking away.

  Our leadership team plus a couple of others who had the well-suited secure smiles of those whose jobs were not in any danger and were, therefore, probably high-ups in Back To Employment, were looming up to me. I’d been looking out of the window at the sun sliding down the buttresses of the Minster, throwing knives of shadow across the stonework when the introductions were done, and not paid attention.

  I noticed that Zac Drewe was in tow.

  ‘Ruby!’ Our senior leader, Michael, cornered me whilst I was trying to attach myself to Priya and Josh from the front office. ‘Have you met Zac?’ There was an atmosphere of ‘evacuate the building and defuse the bomb�
�� about Michael that I wasn’t sure I liked. He was also wearing a smart suit and his grey hair wasn’t hanging in one eye. Michael usually looked like a Sociology lecturer on his day off. Today, he looked like he ran the place.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’m parked in her space,’ Zac said and Michael nodded.

  The other two, a woman with a backcombed beehive hairstyle that looked uncomfortable, and an older man in glasses, smiled beneficently.

  ‘I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to give up your space, just for the time being, Ruby.’ Michael wouldn’t meet my eye. This was bad. I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but it was definitely bad. ‘While we all sort ourselves out, what with the others being over from Leeds and not knowing where else to park. But I wanted you to get to know Zac properly.’

  Now he looked me right in the eye.

  Michael had always left me largely to my own devices. He was happy with our results, he was more than happy with the ecstatic feedback we got from clients and he was positively overjoyed with our increased funding every year. But now he looked like a five-year-old who had been told that someone is Not Happy With Him and can’t work out why.

  ‘Any particular reason?’ I eyeballed Zac, who was still smiling, and sort of lounging alongside backcomb-woman and glasses man, as though they were his parents.

  ‘Oh, did I not explain?’ Another slight nervous look. ‘Ah. Well. Yes. Ruby, you and Zac do very similar work for our two institutions. Very similar. And, I’m afraid, the new company, which I think we’re calling YouBack2Work, aren’t we?’ Another, nervous smile at the other two. ‘It’s a wee bit clumsy, but we’ll work it out. Yes. Well. The new company only needs one counsellor. We are moving to a rather more proactive model, y’see.’ He finished, as though he didn’t know what a proactive model was and was rather hoping it would turn out to be something that featured very thin people in designer clothing.